-Hello. I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
Why are three councilmembers voting no on the city's budget?
What impact will a new 911 alternative program
have on public safety?
And how close are we to the promise
of zero functional homelessness in downtown Seattle?
Councilmember Andrew Lewis answers these questions
and the ones you're standing in, too,
next on "Council Edition."
-Look, people want to live here. People want to build here.
People want to start a business here.
And we need to work as a city government
to make those decisions easier.
-All that and more coming up next
on "City Inside Out: Council Edition."
♪♪
And here we are from District 7,
Councilmember Andrew J. Lewis.
Thank you very much for being with me, Councilmember Lewis.
-Great to be here.
-And let's jump right into it here.
I want to focus on the recently passed budget
for this show here.
This was a very difficult process for the council
after this economic forecast a few weeks ago
showed some major shortfalls ahead in tax revenue.
I'll get to that in a minute here.
But there was this one major point of contention
on the council, this decision to eliminate
80 unfilled positions on the Seattle Police Department.
This prompted Councilmember Pederson
to join councilmembers Nelson and Sawant
in voting no on that budget.
Here's what he said earlier this week.
-I cannot in good conscience endorse a final budget
that I believe fails to learn from recent
public policy mistakes on public safety
and falls short on public safety for a third year in a row.
-Full disclosure -- I invited
Councilmember Pederson to be on this show.
He wasn't able to make it happen.
But police hiring is a big issue.
I always get e-mails about this. I know you do, too.
One viewer wrote this.
Thank you very much for the message.
I'm not sure if we're there at that point,
but Councilmember Lewis, can you tell me
how you look at this issue of police hiring?
And what message does abrogating 80 positions
say about public safety?
-Yeah, well, you know, I was pretty clear in my vote
against doing the abrogation.
I voted against abrogation last year.
I voted against it this year. -Mm-hmm.
-I don't think it sends the right message
until we have stood up robust
and well-funded alternative response systems,
which we're well on our way to doing in this budget.
And we can talk about that later.
-Sure. -But I didn't think that
the abrogation was the right move to make.
I will say I'm very critical,
while I respect my colleagues, of the decision
to use voting on the budget as a mechanism for protest.
I don't think that it's responsible
to tank the entire $1.6 billion General Fund
based on one area of disagreement.
-Right, because you voted for that full budget in approval.
-Yeah, all of us did. -Yeah.
-You're supposed to. -Yeah.
-The city needs a budget. We need to write paychecks.
Brian, we need to give you a paycheck.
-Right. -You're a city employee.
We need to give paychecks. -I'm an independent contractor.
-Yes, no. Understood, yeah.
We need to give paychecks to our police and firefighters.
All of that requires a budget.
We need to pay debt and interest on bonds
that we borrowed as a city. -Mm-hmm.
-And voting down a budget is a reckless and dangerous thing.
It's never been done before,
and it shouldn't be normalized as a protest tactic.
And we've all been critical in the past
when Councilmember Sawant has used voting no on the budget
as a mechanism to protest.
And I think we should be just as critical when other people,
when they don't get their way on one or two budget items, to say,
"We're gonna tank every single service in the city.
We're gonna tank parks, we're gonna tank libraries,
we're gonna tank the police department."
-Right. -And, you know,
one other thing that I'll say --
Mayor Harrell praised this budget.
You know, we had a statement yesterday from Mayor Harrell
praising the investments in public safety,
praising the full funding of his recruitment
and retention plan for Seattle police.
-And the hiring plan for SPD, right.
-The hiring plan for SPD.
Mayor Harrell came out and said this was a public safety budget,
and I agree with him on that, and my colleagues who voted
in the majority agree with him on that.
And I don't think we can normalize this tactic
where if there's one thing
you don't like in the budget, you vote it down.
I think that leads to a very dangerous
Washington, D.C., level of brinkmanship
in how we do politics in the city.
And it's unprecedented. -Yeah.
-So, you know, I didn't get my way on the abrogation.
I voted with Councilmember Pederson
and Councilmember Nelson against the abrogation.
But at the end of the day, we need a budget.
We need to pay our bills. -Right.
-So I don't think it's a valid protest tactic
to say we're gonna tank the whole budget
if we don't get our way on one thing.
-Jumping on that abrogation piece just for a second, though,
if the police department looks like it's going to hire
a net of maybe 30 officers next year
is what it looks like here,
abrogating these positions that they're not going to fill
when there's 200-some odd that Mayor Harrell put in the budget
there initially there,
it would seem to make sense to take those back
and then ask the SPD to ask for them later on down the line,
I think is the logic that
the rest of the council was working with here.
-Well, see, my preference would have been, Brian,
that we keep the position authority,
but if there's surplus money, we be flexible
in working with Mayor Harrell to move the money.
-Okay. -And that's actually
what we did in this budget,
and that was what Mayor Harrell proposed.
And I thought that was the right course.
-Okay. -Doing the permanent abrogation,
it just didn't sit right with me right now,
given the public safety situation that we're seeing.
But, you know, that wasn't what carried the day
with my colleagues, and this is the budget we have.
I would say, again, you know, myself, Mayor Harrell --
we support this final budget.
It gives us the tools we need to start turning the corner.
And we're seeing signs of that
in parts of the city, in downtown and other places,
where we are making a lot of progress with our partnership
as a council and a mayor on these problems.
And this budget is gonna help us with that effort.
-Got it. I want to talk about
another important issue with police.
So, the council adopted Mayor Harrell's plan
to move parking enforcement officers back to the SPD.
They've been housed in the Seattle Department
of Transportation for the past year.
That hasn't worked out all that well.
The eventual home for these officers
may not be with the SPD, but this is a move
that could save about $5 million in administrative costs,
according to the mayor's office here.
I know a lot of councilmembers wanted to keep these PEOs
in the Department of Transportation.
How did you come to this agreement here?
-Well, really, for me, what it came down to
was the ability to save some money
and programmatically expand
some other public safety opportunities
by doing that move. -Okay.
-And that was really --
it was not worth $5 million a year
to keep them in SDOT doing the exact same thing,
the exact same job.
The interaction with the public is not gonna change
based on this decision.
But we got $5 million additional in the budget
to make sure that we can expand
the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion,
now known as Let Everyone Advance with Dignity.
-Yeah. -We got money to invest
in public safety efforts downtown on Third Avenue,
money that we would not have had
if we had insisted on keeping the parking officers in SDOT.
So that's what it really came down to,
is just the practicality of,
what can I do to maximize the public safety benefit
for the people of District 7?
And it was moving them back to SPD.
There's gonna be no difference in the service
you're gonna get from parking enforcement.
But that move gives us the opportunity
to expand additional public safety programming
that we wouldn't be able to do otherwise.
And that's what it was for me.
-The eventual home in the Communications Center --
I know there's been some talk about that, too.
-Yes, I mean, I do still want to move parking enforcement,
ultimately, to a role
where their full civilian impact can be realized.
-Yeah. -This is a longer story.
This could be a whole thing in and of itself.
-You're right. -But Councilmember Herbold and I
really wanted to move them to the CSCC back in the day,
because we wanted to also expand their role.
We didn't want them just to do parking enforcement,
but to really follow up
on some recommendations from their union,
SPEOG, the Parking Enforcement Guild,
where they wanted to expand their role to
taking reports on car theft...
-Sure. -...to try to, you know --
doing a bigger amount of the traffic direction.
-Sure. -You know, these are things
they wanted to take on in a role that could be expanded
and built up as civilian enforcement officers.
And that role was never really embraced
by the previous Durkan administration.
-Yes. -I think there's an opening
with Mayor Harrell to do something similar.
Mayor Harrell's talked about creating a new
civilian public safety department, for example.
-Right. -Whether that's something
where the CSCC serves
as the nucleus for that new project,
or whether it's a completely additional department,
we have yet to see.
But my hope is that the parking enforcement officers
could find a role there and that their role could be expanded
to being more of a civilian enforcement officer
with broader mandate than just traffic enforcement.
-Yeah. -And being in SDOT,
it was basically, you know, as the name implies, right --
Department Transportation -- your role is gonna stay
doing the parking enforcement. -Yeah.
-You know, I don't want to speak for all my colleagues,
but Councilmember Herbold and I have really been
advocates of this position that
these civilian officers could take on a much bigger role,
and it could free up police officer time
to focus on things only they can do
and that they need to be doing.
-Let me talk about another issue with public safety
that you've been working on for some time here
to provide an alternative to 911,
a response that would involve a mental health worker
and a police officer potentially.
There's money in the budget for this,
a dual dispatch type of program here.
I want to know when we're gonna see it launch,
what it would look like,
and what impact you think it's gonna have.
-So I'm more optimistic on this than I've ever been
in the last couple of years.
And as you know, Brian, this has been --
-You've been working on this a while.
-This has been a very big priority of mine
since at least June of 2020... -Yeah.
-...probably a little bit earlier than that.
But I think this is really the center of gravity
of what community has really been demanding
ever since we started really reevaluating,
how do we do public safety in the city of Seattle,
has been, there's this big category of calls
that don't require a gun-and-badge response,
and we can diversify our response
based on what other jurisdictions are doing
to make sure that police are going to things
only they can respond to.
We want police focusing on burglaries.
We want police focusing on robberies.
We want police focusing on things
that are criminal violations in the city
that they need to respond to
and where their response is necessary and appropriate.
But there's all these other things
related to extreme poverty,
related to mental health, substance addiction,
where other cities have really shown us
that alternative responses can be incredibly effective
and can save officer time
so that they can focus more on these things
that are really affecting our quality of life.
I'm talking to business districts all the time
that are suffering from spates of burglaries,
you know, at like 3:00 to 6:00 in the morning.
And it'd be great to have more officer emphasis
in business districts to be able to do that
because we've freed up response time and capacity
by adding these alternative responses
for things they don't need to do.
So in terms of the process we set up,
we're gonna have a pilot that we've worked out
with the Harrell administration
to do a dual dispatch response.
Let me just briefly break down what that means.
-Yeah. -So dual dispatch means
that there'd be this completely independent civilian team.
In other cities, typically,
this involves a mental health clinician
and then maybe like a social worker or like an EMT.
-Okay. -But this team, it's typically
two members with a van or maybe an SUV
that has some equipment in it. -Sure.
-They can respond dually with the police.
So the police are in their own separate vehicles.
-Sure -911 call comes in.
And the dispatcher, the 911 dispatcher, can say,
"Okay, I'm gonna dispatch this low-acuity public health team."
-Right. -"And I'm gonna
dispatch the police"... -Yeah.
-..."both separately at the same time."
But if the social worker team gets there first
and it's something that they can handle,
they would be in a position to be able
to screen SPD off the call, right?
Or they'd be able to say, "You know, we got here.
It's not dangerous." -Yeah.
-"We can handle it. We're trained to handle it.
We can, you know -- SPD, you can screen off."
So it can save that officer car time,
because then they can screen off the call
and they can be redirected to a call only they can do.
-Right. -That is the concept
of what we're trying to do here with a dual dispatch.
It is different from co-response,
which is the model that's like our crisis intervention team,
which we're still gonna have and which is still
really, really, really important.
But that is the system where you have an officer
and a social worker in the same car.
-Yeah. -And we're still gonna have that
because there are certain circumstances
where that is the appropriate response.
But there's these other things where this public health team
really can do this on its own.
So I just wanted to break down those different --
so we will have co-response and dual response
and police response. -Okay...
-...in our portfolio in 2023. -Right.
-In terms of moving forward, you know, we passed the budget,
and this is gonna go forward now to be implemented
by the Harrell ministration. -Right.
-We have something that I know you've discussed
before called a term sheet... -Yes.
-...with the Harrell administration,
where we are working in close partnership
with a dual work team of council and executive staff.
And I'm hoping that now that the budget's done,
we're gonna have a better sense on what that timeline is
in the coming weeks. -Okay.
-So we don't know what the timeline is.
We had to fund it first. Sure, sure.
-Now that we've done that,
the term sheet can move forward to say,
"All right, let's get the rubber on the road, literally,
and, like, let's get this team out there."
But look, Brian, I'll just say
we have lots of great national examples
to draw inspiration from.
This is being done in in Denver, it's being done in Albuquerque,
it's being done in Fort Worth, Eugene.
In Denver, it's correlated to a 34% reduction of crime
in the downtown area of Denver. -Yeah.
-So this really can be a game changer once it's on the road.
And I'm hoping it will be.
And I believe the Harrell administration believes
the same thing as the council, as manifested in the term sheet
and really their support for this concept in the budget
and baking it into their initial budget that we just approved.
-Thank you for breaking all those pieces down.
I wanted to move on to human services
with you if I could.
This budget largely reflects
what Mayor Harrell originally proposed,
but the council did push back on his plan to reduce
a cost of inflation raise for human services workers.
He wanted to spread it out over a couple years.
The council says, "Let's do it now,"
wants to uphold those raises for people
who really are the frontline workers
in the crisis of homelessness.
Let me know went into this decision
and why this was important.
-Well, public safety is broader than badges and guns,
and we've been discussing that on this show and in public.
And the police have a critical and indispensable role.
And it was really important in this budget
that we support the police,
that we fully fund the hiring and retention plan.
I would argue it was just as important that we make sure
that we focused on the retention and recruitment challenges
our service providers are experiencing.
There's a lot of work that folks on the streets of Seattle
are doing to work on people
who are in a cycle of public health challenge
that is resulting in them breaking the social contract
and creating public disorder. -Mm-hmm.
-And the teams that have been making really big differences
on that -- you know, LEAD/Co-LEAD,
Downtown Emergency Service Center,
I mean, you go down the list, Catholic Community Services --
these folks are having a very difficult time recruiting
and retaining people to do incredibly challenging work
in a really tough economic environment.
-Right.
-And with inflation going way up,
it's just eating at the limited wages and benefits
that we've historically rewarded those positions with.
So I frankly don't think what we did was enough.
I think what we did was the bare minimum.
I am incredibly proud that we were able to do it
in a tough budget environment, but I can't imagine
what it would have done to the social service end
of our public safety work if we had only given the folks
doing that work like a 4% increase
instead of a true inflationary increase.
I think it would have fallen off a cliff.
And I think that we truly work to avert disaster
by fully funding the commitment that we made an ordinance --
the previous council.
I was not on the council when that ordinance passed,
but by fully honoring that commitment,
we're really getting stability
in a critical segment of our social service
and public safety work, and we need to build on that
by continuing to elevate the standards, the benefits,
the pay the people in that work get.
We need to treat them like the first responders they are,
and the city will be safer for it.
-Yeah, let me keep going down
this human services path with you
because you and I had a really good conversation
about the King County Regional Homelessness Authority
a few weeks ago, part of which I used
on our "City Inside Out" program.
There are a few points you made
that I couldn't get into that show
and I wanted to follow up on this,
specifically, this plan from the KC RHA REACH --
functional zero homelessness in downtown Seattle
sometime in 2023.
Marc Dones, the CEO, says it's going to happen.
Do you agree? Downtown in your district.
Let's talk about it.
-I feel more optimistic about it than I have in the past.
Let me put it this way, you know, and I'll say this.
Sorry, Marc, I'll say this here.
You know, I was a little skeptical
that we would be able to achieve functional zero
in the time frame that the KC RHA put out.
I am optimistic that we're getting closer than ever before
to realizing that based on the energy
and the organization that has gone into Partnership for Zero,
and I can just break it down real briefly here,
but essentially the work that's been --
the groundwork that's been being laid this year
is the King County Regional Homelessness Authority
has hired up a bunch of system advocates
who have been building a by-name list
of people experiencing homelessness
who are in and around the downtown core.
-Those advocates have lived experience, too,
as being homeless, yeah.
-Yes, and have been doing this work
in some cases for many years. -Right.
-They're very experienced and diligent people,
and they've been generating this by-name list,
and at the same time, they've also been building
a list of potential housing referrals and housing units.
-They're working with landlords on this stuff.
-Yeah, and working with landlords.
So now they're at the point
where everything is kind of coming together,
where they're matching the by-name list
to these housing referrals, and they're all coordinating it
through a very, very efficient command center
where all these providers and system advocates
are case conferencing.
They're in the same room,
and they're matchmaking this by-name list
to these housing referrals.
You know, it's also important to define functioning --
Functional zero. -Yeah.
-And this is a term, if we remember back
to the partnerships that we've done with Third Door Coalition,
which is an alliance of service providers and business owners,
Functional zero was something they talked about a lot
because look at -- you know, unfortunately,
I don't think in the near future
we're gonna completely be a society without homelessness.
But you can reach functional zero in the sense
that you can make homelessness rare, brief, and temporary.
So, you know, we're probably still gonna have a situation
going into February of next year, January of next year,
where there are gonna be people
presenting as experiencing homelessness downtown.
But we're gonna have a system that can help
get that person on a by-name list,
give them access to case conference resources,
get them referrals to housing
so that we don't have a situation like we have had
where you have chronic parts of downtown that become
massive encampments or become massive concentrations
of poverty and disorder
because we don't have our act together
to be able to give people something better as an offer.
And KC RHA has really shown now we have this very --
the beginnings of what could be a very efficient system
to first identify folks based on where they're at
and what their needs are,
case conference through all of our resources,
because there's big myriad of resources,
and the KC RHA actually, just as a little plug,
recently put out a database of all those resources, which...
-That's right. It's online. -...is really, really helpful,
and anyone in the public can look at it.
But you case conference all of that together,
and you match it to the housing.
And we've never really had something that efficient before,
and that can really be a game changer.
And we're already seeing the early signs that it will be.
And that's not just me saying that, right?
I mean, that's, you know --
We Are In, which is a consortium of businesses
that have been supporting this and community leaders
it's the Downtown Seattle Association,
it's the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce.
You know, we're bought in on this regional approach.
And, actually, one other plug.
Our budget makes a bigger investment than ever
in the success of that system.
And, you know, that is something that we really need to do
as people committed to a regional solution.
It really comes into, are we putting our money
behind the theory of change we want to see?
And that's what we are doing as a council in partnership
with the business community, with service providers,
and with the King County government.
-Can I touch on another issue?
Because the Council also made investment in local schools
following the shooting death of a student
at Ingraham High School a few weeks ago.
Hundreds of students, as you know, came to City Hall,
protested here against gun violence,
asked for more funding for mental health counselors.
The council made an investment towards this goal of $4 million,
a quarter of that going to Ingraham directly.
The budget chair called this a down payment, I believe,
and this is an issue here.
The city can help in some ways,
but this is a role for the state really to jump in as well.
Can you talk about this -- this investment,
maybe some of the limitations involved with it, too?
This is a huge story for our area.
-Look, we did it because we couldn't wait.
And I give great credit to Councilmember Mosqueda,
great credit to Council President Juarez,
who had this horrible tragedy occur in her district
and who really came at the end of the budget cycle to say,
"You know, we need to put our money where our values are,
and this school system needs this proper support
for young people who are troubled,
who might use guns as a method of resolving arguments,
or we've increasingly seen during COVID,
young people committing suicide with guns."
And the leadership from Councilmember Mosqueda
and Council President Juarez in getting that in the budget
was something I was very proud to support,
and I really appreciate both of them as colleagues.
To your point, Brian,
the state really does need to step up on this.
Health care is a state issue.
Behavioral mental health care is definitely a state issue.
I think this is one of the biggest deficiencies
that we've seen in state government.
We're seeing it dramatized right now by King County,
rightfully suing the state for negligence
in providing ample behavioral mental health care
in the King County jail,
which has seen an unprecedented number
of suicides and mental health crises during the COVID era,
because -- and this was reported
in "The Seattle Times" yesterday.
-Right, right.
-And the state -- they're suing the state to perform to say,
"You are not living up to your obligations
to provide health care to people that are
in the King County jail."
You can apply that to the schools.
You know, the City of Seattle has been more generous
than any other government in stepping into a place
where we don't have a charter responsibility,
but we have a moral responsibility
to provide this level of care.
The last thing that I'll say on this
is I'm very excited about the work
that King County is doing
and that I'm gonna be engaging more with
in the coming months through my role
on the Regional Policy Committee
around the crisis intervention centers.
And I know you talked about this recently on your podcast,
but, you know, King County right now
has something like 16 crisis mental health beds
for a county of several million people.
-Yeah. -It's completely unacceptable.
And this new proposal from King County
is gonna create five crisis intervention centers.
One is gonna be completely dedicated to young people
and to the unique issues that present
for the mental health challenges
the young people are experiencing
in this really difficult time. -Yeah.
-That is gonna be a game changer,
and it's something that I look forward
to supporting on the Regional Policy Committee
and moving it forward.
Huge props and credit to Councilmember Zahilay,
huge props and credit to Executive Constantine
on taking this on as an issue.
And I think that's the next big step.
You know, obviously in the state legislature,
we're gonna need to push for comprehensive
behavioral mental health care, but these wellness centers
are gonna make a big difference, too.
And I'm looking forward to making sure
that service is synched up with our schools.
-Got it. I want to make sure
that I touch on one issue that's a big one here.
I've got a couple minutes to do it with you here.
The big overall question on the budget --
use of the JumpStart payroll tax here.
This fund has performed above expectations,
and much of the budget shortfall the city is experiencing now,
a big drop in real estate excise tax a part of that,
has been patched up with JumpStart.
And I say patched up because I don't think
the council found any more permanent solutions
to this going forward.
Let's talk about this.
Another revenue shortage is gonna be there
the next time the next budget rolls around.
What's that longer-term solution there?
I've got about a minute and a half.
-Yeah, well, I think there's two things.
First, we do have this revenue task force,
and we're going to be having a community conversation
about what it might look like
to pursue additional progressive revenue
to fill those gaps in the long term.
The second thing that I would put out there
is we really have a lot of targeted investments
in this budget cycle
that are focused on downtown revitalization.
Downtown produces over 50% of our General Fund tax receipts,
and getting downtown really humming again
hopefully will make a difference on our forecast.
We are still a city that -- I think that we have
the second most cranes of any West Coast city right now.
And, you know, construction is
one of the big feeders of our General Fund.
Look, people want to live here. People want to build here.
People want to start a business here.
And we need to work as a city government
to make those decisions easier.
And that's gonna have an impact on our General Fund.
So I don't think it's just gonna be
that progressive revenue work, although we need to do that,
and that's gonna be part of it.
Another part of it is, you know,
let's get that real estate excise tax up
by making this a better place
for people to come and buy property.
Let's get that sales tax up by reinvigorating our retail core
so that people are coming downtown
and patronizing those businesses again.
You know, let's get that property tax up
by building new construction,
which increases our property tax base.
So I think part of it is, let's increase the base
of the modes that we have
while we're also looking at progressive taxation.
And that's what I'm looking forward to in 2023.
-Thank you. I have one final question here.
The city is about to announce some big improvements
coming to Memorial Stadium there on the Seattle Center campus.
You're a graduate of The Center School right there
on that campus, and I wanted to know
your thoughts about some major changes, it sounds like,
coming to your old stomping grounds.
-Yeah, well, the Seattle Center
over the course of the last 15 years,
and, you know, for part of that period,
I had a front row seat going to school on that campus,
has really transformed in an incredibly positive way.
I mean, it's the cultural center of our city.
You know, the modern history of our city
is linked back to the World's Fair.
And all of the kind of rough edges have been polished.
Right? The Northwest Rooms, which were falling apart,
now it's the home of the VERA Project,
Seattle International Film Festival, KEXP.
-Yep. -You know, KeyArena,
which was sort of missionless,
now the home of a new NHL team,
hopefully soon an NBA team... -Yeah.
-...and this great modern subterranean arena
in Climate Pledge,
The only rough patch, the sore thumb of that campus,
is Memorial Stadium.
It's crumbling. It's falling apart.
It's fenced in. It's a blight.
We are gonna be focusing on a transformative partnership
with the Seattle Public Schools
that we have funded in this budget
to overhaul, to rebuild that stadium,
and hopefully have it be here in time for the World Cup
when we are hosting it in a couple years.
And it's gonna really open up the campus.
It's gonna be a beautiful amenity for the community,
and I'm really looking forward to it.
-USA, USA! I can hear it from here.
-Yes. -Thank you very much,
Councilmember Lewis, for joining me.
That's all the time we have here on "Council Edition."
We'll see you next time.
♪♪